Evie's Bombshell - By Amy Andrews Page 0,21

and she was safe and well and so very close, looking like Evie and smelling like her and reminding him of all the times he’d seen her in the hallways at the Harbour looking at him with that aloofness that didn’t fool him and making him want her even more and he couldn’t make himself resist her.

Not after today.

Evie gasped at the ugly blue black bruise on his side, her fingers automatically tracing its ugly outline. ‘Bloody hell, Finn,’ she murmured.

But already her fingers were becoming methodical, prodding, shutting her eyes as she fell into a familiar routine. She pushed gently all around the injured area, feeling Finn’s abdominal muscles tense, hearing the harsh suck of his breath.

‘Sorry,’ she murmured, opening her eyes, her own breath catching at their proximity, at the intensity in his gaze. ‘Can’t feel or hear any crepitus,’ she said, her voice unsteady.

‘That’s because they’re not broken,’ he said.

Evie nodded, her breath thick in her throat as her fingers lightly stroked the bruised tissue, exploring the dips of his ribs. ‘You should get an X-ray tomorrow when we get back to the Harbour.’

Finn nodded as the light caress of her cool fingers soothed and inflamed all at once. ‘Maybe.’

Evie smiled. She guessed his ribs must be bad for him to sort of comply so easily. She dropped her hand but he didn’t move away and she didn’t want him to. They were close enough for her to lay her head on his chest, have him put his arms around her.

Close enough to tell him about the baby.

The silence stretched but she just couldn’t get the words out. And she needed him to come back to Sydney. Not disappear.

But she had to say something. Because if she didn’t she was going to kiss him and then they’d be on the bed because a kiss was never enough with Finn and he’d find out then for sure.

‘Sorry for calling you a coward,’ she murmured. ‘You’re not. Not in the physical sense, anyway. You certainly proved that today.’

Finn grunted. Only Evie could call him an emotional coward and couch it as a compliment. ‘I’m sorry for what I said too. I …’

He broke off. He what? He did want to be a surgeon? He did want to be near her? The truth was he’d spoken his mind. But he’d never wanted to hurt her with it. To throw his words at her like they were poisonous darts.

‘You what?’ she prompted as his unfinished sentence hung in the air.

Finn shook his head, his gaze dropping to Evie’s mouth. ‘You drive me crazy.’

Evie pulled her bottom lip between her teeth. ‘I know.’

Finn felt the movement jolt all the way down to his groin. ‘Damn it,’ he muttered, reaching for her, sliding his hand under her damp hair at the back of her neck, pulling her head closer as he closed the gap from his side, claiming her mouth on a tortured groan.

‘Damn it, damn it, damn it,’ he muttered against her lips, as she whimpered and the urge to hurdle the barrier between them took hold and he pushed his other hand into her hair and her mouth opened as his moved against hers and he kissed her hard and deep and hungry, every ragged breath tearing through his ribcage.

A loud knock thundered against her door and he pulled away, gasping. They both were.

‘Evie? Evie? Are you okay?’

Finn clutched his chest again as he took a step back, every nerve ending on fire, every cell begging him to get closer, to get looser, to get naked.

His gaze never left her face as he slowly backed even further away, her moist mouth and glazed expression slugging him straight in the groin, begging him to come nearer.

His back bumped gently against the door. ‘She’s fine, Ethan,’ he called.

Then he turned the doorhandle and admitted his friend. And a massive slice of sanity.

CHAPTER FOUR

ON MONDAY MORNING at eight-ten precisely Finn picked up the scalpel and knew Evie was right.

He couldn’t not be a surgeon.

He’d been wasting his time, his talent, his future at Beach Haven when his true calling was right here—surgery.

Damn it!

As he worked methodically through the steps of the quadruple bypass, as familiar to him as his own breath, the fact that the man on the table was one of the world’s richest men faded to black.

Everything faded to black.

It was just him, an open chest and a beating heart. Cutting into the pericardium, harvesting the veins, putting the patient on bypass,